


Two Truths and a Lie

by ICanStopAnytime



Series: Playing Games [1]
Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Angst, Caryl, F/M, Friendship, Humor, Prison
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-23
Updated: 2017-12-23
Packaged: 2019-02-19 05:03:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13116612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ICanStopAnytime/pseuds/ICanStopAnytime
Summary: Night watch in the prison tower can be boring. Carol wants to play a game to pass the time.  Daryl's less enthusiastic. Takes place during the Season 3/4 interlude.





	Two Truths and a Lie

The Georgia sky was a clear, dark purple expanse tonight, punctuated by stars. Daryl gazed up from the prison watchtower at all those burned out suns, dead but not dead, still reaching out their life to earth, the way the walkers reached their fingers through the wire fence below. The gnashing of the small crowd that had gathered along the fence had become as familiar as any other forest noise – the chirping of fall crickets, the hooting of the winter owl, the chattering of spring chipmunks – familiar, but not soothing.

Carol strolled to the far end of the tower. She had her suede jacket buttoned all the way to the top, and Daryl didn't blame her. His poncho billowed out over him, providing a heavy layer of warmth. It had gotten just cold enough that their breath made faint clouds in the air. He supposed they could go inside the booth, but they got a better view from the rail, and you had to breathe the fresh air as often as you could when you lived in a prison. 

Carol strolled back and stopped beside him. She looked out over the quiet prison yard, the meandering walkers in the field, and the few thrashing at the fence. "Night watch is boring."

"Peaceful," Daryl said.

"You say potato, I say poh-tah-toe."

"Well no one promised ya it'd be a party up here."

"Glenn and Maggie always have a party up here," she said with a smile and a wiggle of her eyebrow.

Daryl didn't know why she did that. She was always making sexually suggestive comments to him. Was that just how all women acted when they were friends with a man? He didn't know. He'd never been friends with a woman before. Was she flirting with him? Is that what flirting was? He didn't know. He'd had women come onto him before, but mostly when they were high or drunk, and there'd been nothing subtle about how they'd done it. If it  _was_ flirting, did she want him to flirt back? And if she did, how in the hell was he supposed to do that? Wouldn't it sound pervy if he said the kind of things to her she said to him? Wouldn't she be disgusted and start avoiding him? Daryl never knew what to say to her when she did that, so he just said what he always said: "Stop."

Carol laughed. Her sexual teasing made him confused and uncomfortable, but the one thing he liked about it was that it always made her smile. He loved her smile. It brought out the twinkle in her pretty blue eyes and turned her face girlish and sweet. Seeing her happy made him feel happy, at least, he assumed that's what this feeling was. Happy had not been a common emotion for him, but he didn't know how else to describe the slightly increased heart rate he experienced when she smiled, or that weird fluttering in his stomach, like night moths trapped under a porch light.

"Let's play a game," she said.

"S'posed to be watchin'. Cain't watch and toss a ball 'round."

"Not  _that_ kind of game," Carol said. "A  _talking_  game."

"S'posed to be watchin'."

"What, you can't walk and chew gum at the same time?"

"Don't chew gum."

Carol chuckled. "Fine. Can you walk and chew tobacco at the same time?"

"Course I can. Prefer smokes, though. Don't need that quick, strong buzz all at once. I like it slow."

"You like it slow? Good to know," she said with a twinkle in her eye.

He tilted his head down, away from her gaze, and murmured, "Stop."

She  _giggled_. That's the only way he knew how to describe it. She was woman and girl at the same time. Experienced and innocent. Sweet and, now, ready to kill at a moment's notice. She was everything in one thing.

"Let's play two truths and a lie," she said.

"Hmhm?"

"We tell each other two truths about ourselves, and one lie, and the other person has to guess which is the lie."

"Ain't good at lyin'."

"Is that your first one? Because I already know that's a truth."

"Ain't my first one. 'S a stupid game." He walked away to the edge of the tower. He glanced back and saw she was frowning. He didn't like it when she was upset, so he walked back again. "Fine. Ya go first."

She smiled. And there were those night moths again, trapped in the porch light of his stomach.

"Okay," Carol said. "I used to be a cheerleader in high school."

"Lie," Daryl said instantly.

"You have to wait until I've said all three.  _Then_  you can make your guess."

"Fine. But I already know that's a lie."

Of course, Carol  _was_  cheerful, at least she was these days. And she  _was_  pretty. But she wasn't the kind of pretty that the cheerleaders in his high school were.

"Okay, next one," she said. "I got straight A's in high school."

"Likely true." Carol was smart as a whip. He hadn't guessed that about her in the beginning, but he and Rick had been teaching her to shoot and assemble and disassemble her gun and clean it, and she picked up everything so quickly. He never had to explain anything twice. It was like her mind was a vault and everything was alphabetized in there and she could pluck a memory out at any second.

"You have to wait!" she insisted. " _Then_  you can guess. I haven't said my third one."

"Fine. What's yer third one?"

"I didn't have my first kiss until I was eighteen."

"That cain't be true," he said.

Who the hell wouldn't want to kiss a sweet thing like her? Then again, maybe it was true. Carol had an innocence about her, and she'd somehow ended up married to that abusive asshole. How could that have happened to a woman with a lot of experience with men, a woman who had been treated better? Not that Daryl had been given a good example of how to treat women when he was growing up. He'd seen his father hit his mother, but, unlike Carol, his mama hit back just as hard. Merle had told him there was no sense standing up for Mama when she'd stand up for herself. Try to "protect" her and you'd just get in the middle of fists flying and hair pulling and objects soaring. You'd go deaf from all the hollering. And, the truth was, sometimes Mama even started those fights. She'd smacked Daryl's pa upside the head with a frying pan once, when Will Dixon came home smelling of cheap perfume and missing his belt.

But half the neighbors did the same thing. Once, Daryl had seen the woman next door chasing her husband out of their cabin while throwing Precious Moments figurines at him and shouting her head off. Sometimes someone called the cops when the fights got too loud or went on too long, or when a shotgun went off, but mostly people just ignored them. And the cops never did anything but show up and settle it down and take statements. Daryl hadn't realized there was any other way for couples to handle arguments until he'd spent two months crashing at his Aunt Billie Jean's house one summer. He ran away from home one late June, after his freshman year of high school. She and her husband lived in a middle-class suburb outside of Athens. Daryl had nothing but an address, and he'd ridden his dirt bike all seventy miles there, dragging it into the woods at night and camping out. Merle was in the army at the time, his mama was a few years dead, and his pa was in one of his raging drunk moods.

Daryl hadn't seen Aunt Billie Jean since his mama's funeral. Mama had always spoken ill of her sister for moving to Athens, said she'd gotten "too big for her britches" with that "fancy city job" of hers (she was just a bank teller) and that "uppity, sissy husband" she'd married. But Daryl had remembered his aunt as a kind woman, and he didn't know where else to go. Any of his local aunts and uncles would have only let him stay for a day or two before marching him through the woods straight back home. He hoped Aunt Billie Jean would let him stay longer. Instead, when he'd shown up on her doorstep, Aunt Billie Jean had immediately picked up the phone to call her brother-in-law. Fortunately, Will Dixon's phone was out of order. "He ain't paid the bill," Daryl told her. "They cut it off. Guess I gotta stay with y'all."

Well, Aunt Billie Jean was having none of that. She had her husband Duke put Daryl right in the car and drive him back home. Uncle Duke said they were going to have "a talk" with his father about why Daryl had felt the need to run away. When Daryl's uncle found the cabin vacant, he said they'd sit down and wait for Will Dixon to get back from work. Uncle Duke plopped down on the brown and gold cloth couch. A cloud of dust rose up, and Uncle Duke coughed and winced.

Daryl said, "He ain't at work. He ain't got no job no more."

"He on the dole?" Uncle Duke asked.

"Don't qualify for unemployment. Got fired. Gets food stamps, but he trades 'em for smokes and whiskey."

"Then how does he feed you?"

"Feed myself mostly." Daryl hunted and fished, and he ate at his cousins' houses or neighbors houses sometimes, whoever would offer him a sandwich or some jerky or a bag of pork rinds.

Uncle Duke stood slowly and paced his way around the cabin, looking at the giant tit-shaped ash tray full of cigarette butts, the empty whiskey bottles littering the furniture and carpet, the cockroaches scurrying through the tiny kitchen piled high with dirty dishes. He stood before Daryl and looked him up and down - the old, fraying clothes that had been worn by three older cousins before him, the dirt under the fingernails, the hair that hadn't been washed in a week. "You're coming back with me and staying with us until your daddy comes to get you."

Uncle Duke left a note with his address and phone number and drove Daryl silently back to Athens. Daryl stayed with them for the rest of that summer, and his father never checked in once on him. Daryl saw Uncle Duke and Aunt Billie Jean fight, but do it without yelling at the top of their lungs or throwing anything or anyone hitting anybody. And when Daryl fought with one of them and went straight to yelling, which was the only thing he knew how to do, they'd both speak back to him in a low, calm voice, until he felt like a damn idiot raising his voice.

They were good people, and they fed him well, but they had too many damn rules. They wanted him to wear "clean" clothes and have a "curfew" and say "please" and "thank you" and not bring dead animals into the house or watch pornos on the VCR, and then, when the end of August rolled around, they started talking about enrolling him in the local school and making him repeat his freshman year because "whatever school Will had him in," Uncle Duke said, "they weren't teaching him shit." That was the last straw. No way in hell he was going to some suburban school, with stuck-up, well-dressed suburban kids, as a 15-year-old freshman.

Daryl went back home. It would only be two more years before Merle got out of the army. He could survive his pa that long, if only by avoiding him as much as possible, and then he and Merle could get a place somewhere. Daryl left his aunt and uncle a note. It said –  _Thanks for everything. Headed home. Don't come after me – Daryl._

He half expected Aunt Billie Jean and Uncle Duke to show up at the cabin and drag him back to Athens,  _make_  him go to that "good school." But they didn't. He was relieved they didn't chase him down, but he was also hurt. He knew he'd given them a hard time those two months. And he knew they didn't have any legal right to him or responsibility for him. They'd done their part, more than they had to, more than he'd asked for. But a small part of him had truly believed they would follow him home and drag him back. And then he'd come with them kicking and screaming, because hell if he was going to let someone tell him what to do, but they'd  _make_  him come.

Only…they didn't.

They mailed him care packages, once a month, but he never saw their faces again. When he ran away from home for good at sixteen, three months before Merle got out of the army, maybe the care packages kept coming, and maybe his pa didn't tell them Daryl was gone, because maybe Will Dixon wanted the cookies and jerky and peanuts and Gatorade, and maybe he thought he could use the pages from the books to wipe his ass.

"You all right?" Carol asked softly.

Daryl cleared his throat and shook off the memory. How had she known he was feeling down? How did she do that? "The cheerleadin' one," he said. "That's the one I'm goin' with. That's the lie."

 Carol shook her head. "Nope. That's true. I was a cheerleader." She shouldered her AR-15 and raised one hand like she was shaking a pom-pom and cried out, "Gooooooooooo Penguins!"

"Penguins? That was yer high school mascot? In Georgia?"

She shrugged. "What was yours?"

"Don't 'member. Only went one year."

"So which of the other two do you think is the lie?" she asked as she visually scanned the prison yard and fence.

"Well, obviously not kissin' 'till you's eighteen."

She laughed. "No, that one was true, too. But I got straight C's in high school, except for my As in Home Ec."

"What? That cain't be true."

"I was not a good student," she insisted. "I was too chatty. And my parents didn't care what my grades were as long as I passed, because I was a girl, and girls don't go to college. Not in my family anyway."

" _No one_  in my family ever went to college." Not even Uncle Duke or Aunt Billie Jean. They'd both had steady jobs, though.

"My brother did. Community college."

"Ya had a brother?" He couldn't imagine how in the hell Carol could have been abused for so long by Ed if she'd had a brother. Why the hell hadn't her brother come over and kicked that man's ass? Daryl's cousin Tami got smacked around by her shack-up boyfriend one too many times, and Merle and Daryl beat the ever livin' shit out of him. A man could tolerate his sister or cousin getting in the occasional  _domestic dispute_  as Merle liked to call them – where she gave as well as she got - but he couldn't tolerate her being slapped around by a much stronger man, and on the regular. Hell, what else were brothers for, if not to beat the shit out of shitty boyfriends?

She nodded. "He didn't finish, though. He died in a drunk driving accident his second year."

"Jesus, I'm sorry."

"I was seventeen when he died."

Well, that explained it. Her brother wasn't around to kick Ed's ass. "I..." He didn't know what to say. The pain of losing Merle was still fresh, and Merle hadn't even been a good brother, really, like hers might have been. He didn't know. She wasn't saying.

"It was a long time ago." Carol shook her head, like she was shaking off the memory. "Your turn."

"For what?" he asked.

"Two truths and a lie."

"Mhmhm." Daryl looked out over the yard. He scanned the field and the forest line. "Don't know what to say."

"Just tell me two true things about you and one lie. For instance, you could say how old you were when you lost your virginity, and depending on the age you pick, that could be either the truth or the lie."

Daryl wasn't about to tell her a thing about his virginity. He scanned the perimeter again.

"Or you could mention some job you had or didn't have. Or a bone you broke or didn't break. It's not that complicated, Daryl."

"A'right. Here goes. Uh…My real name's William. Once had a job as a dishwasher. And broke my arm falling out a tree when I's a boy."

"You might be a better liar than I thought," Carol said. "You said every one of those things in the same tone of voice."

"So, which do ya think's the lie?"

"You never broke your arm falling out of a tree. Dixons don't fall out of trees."

His lips curved into a smile. "Yer right."

"William, though? Really?"

"William Daryl Dixon. My dad was William – well, Will – so's they always called me by my middle name."

"Why would your father give his younger son his name instead of giving it to your older brother?" she asked.

"Did give it to my older brother. William Merle Dixon…the third."

Carol snorted. "The third?"

"The third."

"He named you  _both_  William?"

"Mhmhm."

"Well that's some conceit."

"Yeah, well, he was a dumb ass. If I'd of been a girl, would've been Wilhelmina."

"Oh, I'm going to call you that from now on," Carol promised.

"Don'tcha dare."

"Okay, Wilhelmina, my turn again."

He shot her the stink eye, but he couldn't stay annoyed for long when she was smiling like that.

Carol put a finger on her lips and tapped them. It was something she did to help her think. Daryl liked to chew on his thumbnail to help him think. It also helped him to avoid having to look people in the eyes. 

"Let's see…" she said. "I didn't learn to ride a bicycle until I was eighteen. I didn't see my first X-rated movie until I was twenty-six. And the first time I ever rode a motorcycle was when you rescued me at Hershel's farm."

"No wonder ya were holdin' on to me so damn tight."

"Well, that and we were fleeing a herd of walkers and weaving through them. It wasn't really the motorcycle that made me tense. And, hey, you were tense, too. I could feel it."

"Weren't  _tense_ ," he insisted. "Ain't afraid of no damn walkers."

"Well then you must have been afraid of my arms around you."

He hadn't been  _afraid_  of them. He just wasn't used to being held like that, tight, from behind, by a woman he actually cared about. "So that's true. Every kid knows how to ride a bicycle, so that cain't be true. That's the lie."

"You're terrible at this game."

"Well, ya know, Dixons don't fall outa trees and they don't play school girl games neither."

"Oh, admit it," Carol teased, "you're having fun."

He was having fun, just a little bit. He liked being with her. He didn't much care  _what_  they were doing. Even if he didn't like the game, he liked being with her. "Eighteen?" he asked.

"My big brother tired and tried to teach me, but eventually he just gave up. I was pretty...timid as a girl. Most of my life, really."

Well she sure as hell wasn't being timid tonight, making him play this stupid game.

"Weak," she said quietly. "I was weak, and I don't want to be anymore."

"Well ya ain't," he assured her. "Why'd ya finally learn to ride one? A bicycle?"

"My first boyfriend taught me. He was a good teacher. Gentle. Nice guy."

And her first kiss, apparently. "Why didn't ya marry him?"

"He didn't ask me to. He joined the military after we graduated high school. Got stationed in Germany. Wrote me three letters. The third said he'd found someone else."

"Mhmhm."

"We only dated a month anyway," Carol said. "He still managed to break my heart."

"So the porno one's the lie?"

"Yeah. I've never seen one."

"Never?" Daryl asked.

"Never."

"Guess I should have known that."

"Why?" she asked.

"Ya ain't the type. Ya wouldn't like it."

"Why do you say that?" Carol.

"'Cause yer…you."

"You don't think I can be naughty?" she asked.

He wanted her to stop talking about pornos and being naughty. "A'right, my turn." He walked away from her and pretending to be thinking about the game. It was a long while before he walked back.

"So?" Carol asked when Daryl had walked back. "What are your two truths and a lie?"

"Cain't think of anythin'."

"It's not that hard, Daryl. Anything you've done. Anything you haven't done. Anything you like. Anything you dislike. Anything about you. When you lost your virginity. Whatever."

Damn. She was obsessed with his virginity. This was the second time she'd mentioned it. He better come up with something quick. "A'right...I's the only kid in my neighborhood who ain't never had a stepdaddy. Had my first mason jar of moonshine when I's eleven. And when I's twelve, me and my cousin set fire to the dumpster outside our school day before school started so maybe we wouldn't have to go."

"Well, I've never heard you mention a stepdaddy, so I'm going to assume that's true," Carol said.

"Yer right. Same dumb ass dad my whole damn life."

"My parents were married for twenty-four years before my mama died," Carol said, "And he never remarried. Did you ever have a stepmother?"

"My pa got clean once, for a little while. And this woman came and lived with us. She stayed six months. But then he fell off the wagon and she left."

"Did you like her?"

"She was a'right." Daryl had been eleven, and he'd had a bit of a schoolboy crush on her. Patty was kind. She made him hot meals for dinner. She taught him to play Gin Rummy. She promised him that whatever happened between her and his father, she was always going to be a part of his life. But that was a damn lie. Because on the night Will Dixon came home drunk off his ass, called Patty a bitch for trying to calm him down, and threw a bottle against the wall, she walked out, and she never looked back. Not once.

Carol's voice interrupted his moody thoughts. "The dumpster. That's the lie."

"Nah. The moonshine. I's only ten when we drank that."

"That's not fair. You can't just change a  _year_ ," she insisted.

"Well you ain't told me that. Cain't just make up the rules as you go along."

Carol shook her head. "Moonshine, huh? A whole jar?"

"Half. My cousin drank the other half." He thought about how horrified Lori would have been if Carl had drunk half a bottle of wine at the CDC, and how no one had cared when he and his cousin had done the equivalent. This walker-infested world was brutal, but it wasn't really anymore brutal than the world Daryl had grown up in. He'd never known for sure where his next meal was coming from, or when someone might just disappear from his life. In some ways, this world was better. He had a meaningful role to play, as hunter and supply runner and fighter. People asked his opinion sometimes, and they even listened when he gave it, like it might be worth something. And then there was Carol. Carol, who had just listened to a very short list of his youthful indiscretions. "Sound like white trash, don't I?"

"You sound like someone who had a rough life and rose above it because, deep inside, you're a man of honor."

Daryl looked down at his boots. He didn't know what to say to that. Maybe her words should have made him feel proud, but instead they made him feel ashamed, because he didn't believe he was the man that she believed him to be. But he was _trying_  to be that man. He wanted, so desperately, for her to  _keep_  believing in him.

"My turn," she said, and her voice drew his eyes back up. "My favorite movie is  _Roman Holiday_."

"Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck?" he asked.

"Yes." She sounded surprised that he should know, as surprised as Dale had looked when Daryl had told him he should go back to  _On Golden Pond_. "You've seen it?"

"Seen a lot of old movies when I's growin' up." After his mother died, on those nights when his father disappeared, the TV was Daryl's only company. PBS, used to show classic movies at night. Daryl loved those movies, because in them, everything was always so black and white - not just the color, but the message. There were good guys and bad guys, right and wrong, and you always knew who to root for - not like in real life, when it was never quite clear to him, from one moment to the next, who he loved and who he hated. Those movies were like an anchor of clarity in a sea of confusion. He felt like he was escaping when he watched them, like he was being transported to some other place and time, where he became the hero, where he became something better than the piece of shit his father kept telling him he was. "What's yer other two?"

"My favorite book as a girl was  _Charlotte's Web,"_ Carol replied, _"a_ nd you're the first man who ever brought me a flower." She looked away from him when she said the last one. Maybe the memory of it pained her. Of course it did. He'd failed her. Failed to find Sophia alive.

Daryl swallowed and paced the tower. He made his way back. That last one couldn't possibly be true, could it? Surely Ed, even Ed, in all those years of marriage, had brought her a flower at least  _once_. But why would she say such a thing if it wasn't true? "I cain't be the only one who ever brought you a flower," he said, fearing it might not be a lie after all. "That's  _got_  to be the lie."

"No," she said. "That's true."

"Shit! Even _my_  pa brought my mama flowers at least a couple times a year! Ain't that hard. They's always growin' wild somewheres."

Carol shrugged.

"No one? Not even that first boyfriend of yers? The one ya said was nice?"

She shook her head. 

"Well, hell."

Carol looked out over the rail. "I never said thank you, you know. For that flower."

"Didn't need to."

She glanced back at him, her eyes not quite meeting his. "But I appreciated it. I did. Even if I couldn't say it at the time."

"Glad..." He cleared his throat. "I's glad..." He couldn't make his thoughts move in a straight line. " _Charlotte's Web_ ," he said suddenly. "That's the lie."

She smiled. "Right. That book's too sad. My favorite was  _The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe_. For days after I read it, I kept walking into the closet, pushing the wall, hoping I'd be able to escape into some magical world."

"Shit," Daryl told her. "Saw the movie. The one they made in the 70s? And I did the same damn thing after I saw it!" He laughed at himself. "Didn't work though."

"No," she agreed with a chuckle. "Unfortunately, it didn't."

A sound caught Daryl's ear and he readied his rifle. He scanned the fence through his scope, and then scoured the tree line. The rustling and gnashing was just a deer that had broken through the foilage and been set upon by walkers. "Shit," he muttered. He wished he'd found that deer when he was hunting yesterday. He lowered his rifle.

Carol, who had also been looking through her scope, lowered her gun as well. "Your turn," she said.

"Hmmmm..." He thought for awhile and then decided to follow the same pattern she'd used. "My favorite movie is  _Seven Samurai_."

"I can believe that," Carol said.

"Hold yer horses. Yer s'posed to wait 'til I've said 'em all."

Carol made a pouting face.

"My favorite book as a boy was  _Robin Hood_. And yer the first woman who ever brought me breakfast in bed."

"When did I do that?" she asked.

"Hershel's farm."

"That was dinner."

"Whatever."

"You just copied me!" she complained. "And you even chose to lie about the same one. The book."

"Nah-ah!" he exclaimed triumphantly. "Wrong!  _Seventh Samurai_  is only my second favorite movie."

"So what's your favorite?" she asked.

" _Roman Holiday_."

By the dumfounded way she was looking at him, it seemed she had actually taken him seriously. He laughed. Her face broke into one of his favorite kind of smiles - her smile of happy surprise. She smacked him playfully on the shoulder. Then she said, "Sorry."

"For what?"

"Didn't mean to..." She pointed to his shoulder. Then she appeared pleasantly surprised. "Hey, you didn't flinch."

"Whatdaya mean?"

"When I smacked you just now. You didn't flinch. You used to flinch every time I touched you."

"I did?" he asked, even though he knew damn well he did. He didn't mean to, it was just...he wasn't used to people touching him, unless it was to hit him. "Weren't personal."

"I know," she said softly. "You were abused. By your father."

"What? Ain't never told you that."

"You didn't have to tell me. Takes one to know one. Also...when I was bringing you that dinner in bed? I saw the cuts on your back. You tried to pull up the sheet to hide them, but I saw them."

"Oh."

"So what's  _really_  your favorite movie?" she asked.

He was glad for the change in subject. Carol always seemed to know when to do that. "Promise ya won't laugh?"

Her eyes were already laughing in anticipation when she said, "I promise I'll  _try_."

" _Shane_."

"Shane!" she cried in imitation of the final scene from the movie. "Come back!"

He was embarrassed by her teasing, but her good humor was also infections. He chuckled.

"Shaaaane!" she cried again. "Come baaaack!"

"Shhh!" He put a hand over her mouth, just for a moment, just for as long as it took for him to realize he was touching her lips. He let it drop. "Ya'll wake up baby Shane."

"Don't be so mean. Don't keep calling her that."

"Only say it 'round you."

"Well, your jokes are safe with me," Carol assured him. "In fact,  _anything_  you say to me..." She made a zipping gesture against her lips.

Daryl knew that was true. He wouldn't have said half the things to her he had said tonight if it wasn't true. But he _had_  said them, and he was surprised to find himself looking forward to continuing the game. He nodded to her. "Yer turn now."

 "I didn't lose my virginity until I was married," Carol said. "I once had a job as a receptionist at a travel agency. And I've never left the state of Georgia."

"That first one," Daryl answered without missing a beat. "That's the lie."

"No, that's true."

"Whaaat?"

She laughed. "Wilhelmina, your voice gets high when you're surprised."

Daryl frowned sternly. "Don't call me that no more."

"I'm sorry. Would you prefer Willie?"

He looked coolly at her.

"How about Pookie then?"

"How old was ya when ya got married?" he asked.

"Twenty-two."

"Damn," he said. "Ed waited for ya?" He had trouble imagining that. The guy beat her, but didn't pressure her to have sex when they were dating?

"He didn't have to wait long. We only dated two months. He asked me to elope. In retrospect, I shouldn't have rushed into marriage like that."

"Why did ya?"

"There were exactly two men who asked me out between my first boyfriend and Ed. They both broke it off when I wouldn't have sex on the second date. Ed didn't. I thought it was true love. I was still living with my father. My mother died when I was eighteen, and my father expected me to take care of him. I cooked his food, cleaned his house, washed his clothes, did his grocery shopping…I had almost no life of my own, and I just wanted  _out._  I somehow imagined it would be better doing all those things for a husband than for my father."

"Shit. Ya lost yer brother when you was seventeen and then yer mother the next year?"

She looked away from him, her troubled blue eyes sweeping the yard. "After Roy died, my mother drank herself to death. Took her a year, but she succeeded."

"My mama got so drunk once, she passed out while smokin'. Set the whole damn house on fire. Burned it to the ground, her in it. That's how she died. I's eight."

"That must have been hard for you."

"Mhmhm. My pa was uh...out. Coroner had to hold the body two nights."

"Where was Merle?" she asked.

"Juvie. Again."

Carol looked away from him, like it was all just too much for her. "So which do you think is the lie?" she asked.

"That ya ain't never left the state of Georgia." Daryl was pretty sure he was the only one among them who was  _that_  confined to his roots.

"No, that's true. It's not like Ed ever took me on vacations."

"But ya worked at a travel agency?"

"Yeah. Before we were married. I got to see all those brochures of the places I would never go."

"Plenty to see in Georgia," he told her. He could explore those Georgia forests all his life and never see enough.

She looked him up and down, slowly, suggestively. "There  _are_  some sights to behold."

"Stop." He lowered his head, but then he peered up at her and said, "Ya know, if we was in an office, I could sue you for sexual harassment."

"Daryl, sexual harassment involves  _un_ wanted attention." She bumped his shoulder with hers and smiled. "And you  _know_  you want it."

He chewed on his bottom lip and studied her. "Can I ask ya somethin'?"

"Go ahead."

He looked down at his gun in his hands. "Why do ya do that? All the…the  _things_  ya say?" He tilted his head up slightly to see her response. It wasn't enough to hear it.

"What things?"

"Ya know."

"Flirty things?" she asked.

"Yeah."

She sighed. "You know, I was so inexperienced when I married Ed. And once we were married, he never let me talk to a man, let alone flirt with one. He'd get upset anytime I was  _nice_  to a guy. So on the one hand, now that I've got all this freedom, I just want to use it. I'm like a kid in a candy store, knowing I can say anything I want and no one will get angry at me or threaten me over it. On the other hand, I'm so inexperienced. I have no idea how adults flirt. So I guess…I'm practicing on you."

"Practicin'?"

"Yeah." She slid her gun off her shoulder and turned it in her hands. "The same way I've been practicing with knives and guns."

Daryl swallowed. She'd gotten pretty deadly with the knives and guns. Where did that mean this flirting was going to go? "I ain't the best guy to practice on."

She shouldered her gun again. "Actually, you're the perfect guy to practice on. I can't go wrong. I get the same reaction every time. A wince."

He smiled lightly. "Ya might be damn good at it for all I know," he said. "I just ain't got any practice neither. Less'n ya. How ya gonna know what works and what don't if ya practice on  _me_?"

"Well, I don't think it's about knowing what works right now. It's just about becoming more comfortable with the tool. About building my confidence. Like when you made me do all that dry firing before you had me start shooting real bullets."

"Hmmm." He shouldered his gun, walked up to the rail, and leaned on it. She leaned next to him. They looked out over the prison yard together. A thought occurred to him, and it made him feel that tense readiness his muscles got right before a fist fight, but he didn't know why, because he wasn't in a barroom right now, making sure he had Merle's back. "Who ya practicin'  _for_?"

She shrugged. "I don't know. Anyone."

He narrowed his eyes. Couldn't be Axel. He was dead. Couldn't be Rick. He'd hadn't lost his wife all that long ago. Couldn't be Glenn. He was Maggie's. "One of the refugees from Woodbury?" Daryl tried to think of all the single men in that group.

She shook her head. "There's no one in particular. I just want to be ready." She smiled teasingly. "In case I meet a guy."

"What kind of guy?" he asked.

"Oh, I don't know. He'd have to be masculine and muscular and competent. He'd have to know how to hunt and shoot and kill and look good on a motorcycle and do all of that manly stuff. But he'd  _also_ have to be caring. Good with babies. Humble. Willing to let others take the limelight. Considerate of my feelings."

"Pffft. Y'all get silly ideas from yer dang romance novels. That's a female fantasy. Ain't no such guy in the world."

She smiled, like she was laughing at her own private joke. He didn't understand that smile. He didn't understand half her smiles. But he loved them all. "It's getting colder," she said. "Maybe we should go inside the booth."

"Ya go on," Daryl told her. "Warm up."

"Why don't  _you_  warm me up?"

"Pffft...stop." Those moths were fluttering in his stomach again. And even though he knew she didn't mean it, knew she was just  _practicing,_ he couldn't help but smile. Her eyes were so damn pretty when they twinkled like that. "Ya go on. Wanna breathe a little more fresh air."

She nodded, and when she walked past him toward the booth, she trailed her hand lightly across his shoulders.

The warmth of her touch lingered for a long time.


End file.
